No No No...

Maybe it was payback from the hater gods for being too happy and too much in love on Valentines Day, but the romantic dinner I bragged about having with my hubby in my last post turned out to be the dinner date from hell.

The space, Noe in the Omni hotel is headed by a noted chef known for inventive Asian-meets-Parisian faire. I'm not a foodie but my guy is a chef so I try to know whassup, and by that I mean I ask a lot of questions about stuff that I cant pronounce. After reading a piece on the guy in Gourmet or something, he thought he'd take me there for good meal. Not…

NOE WAS A BIG NO!!!

We'd had such a great day too. Let me digress a bit. In addition to the roses on my desk I mentioned before, I got to go shopping with my man who would usually rather endure Chinese water torture than step foot in the mall with moi. I am always so jealous when I see gals slinking in and out of the dressing rooms at Rampage or Forever 21 or whatever to model for their men, who then lovingly offer advice and praise. "Take the red one, honey!"

My man has no patience for such things, so this was huge. But I was only allowed one store. What would it be? As we walked in, I saw pink bag after pink bag whisk by. What the heck I thought, let's go with the obvious. Victoria's Secret.

To be honest, I actually picked V.S. more for the entertainment value than the merch. Sure enough, the place was filled with dozens of anxious, clueless dudes fumbling with g-strings and brassieres and trying to find the right ones for their ladies.

"Just pick out whatever you want," said the hubby, "I'm gonna go have a smoke." So much for modeling for him…

Anyway, I passed on all the lacey, frilly, red/pink stuff (got enough of it actually) and went for a decidedly plain new style of bra for everyday, Angel's Secret Embrace (Victoria's best selling new bra, the salesgal said).

This one's highly recommended ladies! Seemless, tagless and sooo comfortable. Oh and if you haven't been measured in a while, do it, even if you haven't gained weight. I've been wearing 34 B for years but when they checked my size, much to my surprise I am now a 34 C!

So new bra, favorite dress on, and hair all done up, I'm feeling pretty great as we get to the restaurant at the Omni downtown.

After an HOUR though, we still haven't been seated. The cocktail waitress in the bar over charges us and then gives us attitude about it and I never get the glass of water I request to soothe the cough I've been fighting all week.

We finally get seated and, tick tock, tock tock, I watch the clock, as people seated after us get their first and then second courses while our place settings remain empty. Our waitress is nowhere in sight. Finally the first course comes out. Then like, no shit, 20 minutes later, still no second course. Then the third course (mine was pumpkin soup) comes out. "What happened to the second course?" my hubby asks. The waiter has this dumbfounded look on his face and runs back to the kitchen, taking the soup with him as I suck in the saliva from my lips. "You… can… leave… the …so…" Oh well, guess not.

An hour later we're at about the fourth course (this was a six course meal) and my potato tart is cold and hard as a hockey puck. I send it back and a few minutes later the waitress comes out, menu in hand, showing me how it says "room temperature" for that dish. "Yeah but this is ice cold and it's like a rock!" I stab it with my fork to show her. Now I was pissed.

Isn't the customer always right, especially in these fancy schmancy joints? Would a top chef argue if a diner was not satisfied? I guessed that Mr. Bigtime chef man probably took Valentines Day off and had no clue what was going on here this eve. I was right.

After a polite but perturbed conversation with our waitress who we realized wasn't really at fault and another more intense one with the restaurant manager, we ended up leaving early (well if you consider midnight early) with doggie bags full of food that we didn't even really want. No we didn't get our food comped (we got free drinks…which we sure needed at that point) and 10% off the bill. Not good enough I think in retrospect.

Still, we sipped our drinks slowly before leaving and just sat there and laughed together for a while. Loudly. "I'm just happy to be with you even when everything goes wrong," I told the hubby in between giggles. I meant it.

Just then a pretty green-eyed black guy comes up to our table and says, "Excuse me,"l ooking at hubby. "I don't mean to evesdrop but I just overheard what you said, and thank you. I've been complaining to my boyfriend over there all night about this place and I just really thank you for speaking up. He didn't want me to say anything because its Valentines Day." He looks at me, " I agree with everything you just said too."

The boyfriend, a well-dressed 40 something white guy sitting a table away, looks over and smiles at us.

So that was my V day. I got a new bra, had a shitty dinner and made a couple new friends. More importantly though, I spent some much needed quality time with my man, who is out of town as I write this. He's been traveling a lot lately and I've been bummed about it and I think that's why he really went overboard this year to make the holiday special for me. Funny thing is I would have been just as happy at Mickey Ds sans bra.

***Coincidence alert: My next post will be about the Omni Hotel in San Diego where my pal Ginger Goldmine and I had a fun lil two-day adventure that included our own private limo, the Yin Yang Twins and Hoobstank (?) and lots of champagne. Check out this shot of miss thing to hold ya over.